One of his fundamental opinions about literary work was that to write much and with abundant spontaneity is better than to polish minutely.  Over and over again we find this idea expressed, most noticeably in connection with the poet Campbell, whom Scott could scarcely forgive for making so little use of his poetical gifts.  He applauded the much-criticised fertility of Byron, whose genius was in that respect akin to his own.  “I never knew name or fame burn brighter by over-chary keeping of it,"[351] Scott said.  The greatest writers he observed, have been the most voluminous.  His position was one that could be fortified by inductive reasoning, contrasting in this respect with theories which seem plausible only until they are tested by actual facts, as, for example, Poe’s idea that long poems lose effectiveness by their length.  But perhaps Scott did not sufficiently take into account the circular nature of his argument; for since the world has refused to consider the men very great who “never spoke out,” the truth is not so much that a great man ought to write copiously as that if a man does not write copiously he will not be counted great.  Scott seemed to think it was mere wilfulness that prevented a man of such gifts as Campbell’s from writing abundantly.

The corresponding disadvantages of rapid composition were of course evident to him.  From the first appearance of the Lay to the end of his career he lamented his inability to plan a story in an orderly manner and follow out the scheme; he admitted also that “the misfortune of writing fast is that one cannot at the same time write concisely."[352] Of Marmion he told Southey, “I had not time to write the poem shorter."[353]

His grief on these points seems qualified, however, by a conviction that he could not write with deliberation and method and still produce the effect of vivacious spontaneity.  He thought Fielding was almost the only novelist who had thoroughly succeeded in combining these various admirable qualities,[354] and he said in this connection, “To demand equal correctness and felicity in those who may follow in the track of that illustrious novelist, would be to fetter too much the power of giving pleasure, by surrounding it with penal rules; since of this sort of light literature it may be especially said—­tout genre est permis, hors le genre ennuyeux."[355] “To confess to you the truth,” says the “Author” in the Introductory Epistle to Nigel, “the works and passages in which I have succeeded, have uniformly been written with the greatest rapidity; and when I have seen some of these placed in opposition with others, and commended as more highly finished, I could appeal to pen and standish, that the parts in which I have come feebly off were by much the more laboured.”  He attempted to write Rokeby with great care, but threw the first version into the fire because he concluded that he had “corrected the spirit out of it, as a lively pupil is sometimes